


Spice Cake

by GemmaRose



Series: 32 Days of Sanji [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baking, Birthday Cake, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 23:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7458340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rocinante, step-father of Sanji’s best friend, is determined to make his baby girl a wonderful cake for her birthday, and enlists the best young chef he knows to make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spice Cake

Sanji peeled off his raincoat and hung it up on the peg next to Nami’s, kicking off his boots next to hers as well.

“Next summer, I’m gonna ask Mom to sign me up for a fighting class.” Nami said, shaking out her umbrella.

“Which one?” Sanji asked, starting up the stairs in his sock feet with Nami on his heels.

“The one where you hit people with sticks.” she said after a moment.

Sanji grinned, waving to Nami’s big sister and bigger brother before sitting down on the arm of the couch. “You could probably give Ace and Sabo a run for their money.”

“Who’re they?” Nami frowned, perching on the arm of the arm chair Nojiko was curled up in.

“They’re a year older than me, well, us now.” he grinned, and Nami grinned back before he kept talking. “Sabo takes that class with the sticks, and Ace just takes an all-over fighting class, and they fight each other outside while they’re waiting to get picked up. They’re super cool.”

“You need better role models.” Nojiko said, not even looking up from her book.

“Well at least his are real people, so nyeh.” Nami stuck out her tongue, at her sister, and Nojiko bopped her on the head with the spine of a paperback library book. “Meanie!” Nami huffed, bopping Nojiko right back with her fist.

“Daaaad!” Nojiko called out, twisting to look at the open door to her parents’ bedroom/office. “Nami’s being a violent brat again!”

“Nojiko started it!” Nami yelled, and Sanji winced sympathetically as her hair was pulled. Behind him, sprawled out over ninety percent of the couch, Law scoffed.

“Does it matter?” he muttered.

“Girls, stop being mean to each other.” Mr. Donquixote sighed, walking into the room. “Law, you haven’t been outside all day.”

“Because it’s raining.” the teen interjected.

“That didn’t stop your baby sister, now did it?” Roci asked rhetorically. “You and Nojiko both have library books to return. Put them in your backpacks and walk on down to the library.”

Twin whines of “Daaad!” came from the couch and armchair, and both were summarily ignored. Law grumbled as he slouched off towards his bedroom, undoubtedly to collect the library books in question. Nojiko simply pouted and stalked after him, towards the room she shared with Nami.

“Thanks, Dad.” Nami beamed, and Sanji drummed his heels against the side of the couch.

“You watch some TV, birthday girl.” Rocinante smiled, bending at the waist to kiss Nami’s forehead. “Sanji, could you help me in the kitchen?”

“Okay.” Sanji hopped down off of the arm of the couch as Nami searched for the TV remote amongst Nojiko’s summer school papers and Law’s mess of library CDs on the coffee table. Rocinante lead him into the apartment’s small kitchen, and he blinked at the collection of stuff laid out on the counter and table. “What’s this for?” he asked, picking up a jar of marmalade and frowning at it. Nami loved the stuff, but he couldn’t think of any recipes off the top of his head which would use it.

“Nami’s birthday cake.” Rocinante grinned, picking up a piece of paper from behind the bag of flour and handing it to Sanji to read while he turned on the oven. “I wanted to make her something special, but I’m a klutz. That’s where you come in.” Sanji scanned the printed web page in his hands, quickly reading over the ingredients and instructions for orange spice cake.

“This is easy.” he grinned up at Rocinante. “Where’s your measuring stuff?”

“Uhh...” Rocinante looked around at the cabinets, then shrugged. “Belle doesn’t trust me in the kitchen, so I’m not sure.” he shrugged helplessly. Sanji rolled his eyes.

“Okay, we need a one third cup dry measure, a one cup liquid measure, a half-teaspoon, and two mixing bowls.” Sanji set the paper down on the table, and walked back into the main room of the apartment. “Nami?”

“Hmm?” she looked over at him, apparently from watching Castle in the Sky again.

“Do you know where your mom keeps the baking stuff?”

“Second cabinet left of the sink, under the counter.” Nami grinned, swinging her feet in the air. “You’re helping Dad make a cake?”

“Mhmm.” Sanji nodded. “Thanks, Nami.” he ducked back into the kitchen and opened the cabinet, and sure enough everything was stacked haphazardly inside. He crouched to pick up a pair of glass mixing bowls, and rested them on his knees as he looked for the measuring cups. The weight threw him off, though, and he yelped as he toppled backwards onto his butt. The bowls clattered in his lap, and Rocinante put them up on the table before pulling Sanji to his feet.

“You okay?” he asked, crouching to look Sanji in the eye. Sanji nodded, and turned to poke around in the cabinet again. It didn’t take long before all the necessary tools were lined up on the counter, and Sanji turned around to grab the bag of flour.

“How much of this do we need?” he asked, scooping up a third of a cup of sugar and levelling it with the back of a butter knife.

“Just one third.”

“Cool.” Sanji dumped the sugar in the bowl and turned to measure out the flour. “What about this?”

“Five thirds.”

“Got it.” Sanji dumped the first scoop of flour in, and pointed at the empty bowl with the butter knife. “Can you measure out the liquids?”

“Is there any order I should do them in?” Rocinante asked, looking at the measuring cup like it was going to bite him.

“OJ, oil, molasses.” Sanji said confidently, levelling off the second measure of flour. Rocinante nodded, and reached for the carton of orange juice. His elbow knocked against the open jar of molasses, and Sanji jumped at the resounding crash which filled the kitchen.

“What did Dad break?” Nami called from the other room, sounding almost exasperated.

“Nothing important.” Rocinante called back.  
“The molasses.” Sanji answered at the same time.

“Ok.” Nami said, and fell silent again to watch the movie. Sanji sighed and picked up the bagged ingredients which could be contaminated by the slowly spreading pool of sticky liquid, moving them to the other end of the table

“Uh oh.” Rocinante said quietly, picking up the recipe. The corner of the page where the measuring instructions were had been soaked in molasses, and was now illegible all the way down to OJ, completely obscuring all the dry measurements. Sanji groaned and pushed his hair back, the heels of his hands resting over his eyebrows.

“Okay, you looked at it last, do you remember how much of everything went in there?”

“Orange juice and molasses need the same amount, and everything else was in tablespoons.”

“Alright.” Sanji nodded once, tipping the now jagged-topped jar of molasses upright. “I’ll measure out the molasses so there’s no glass shards in it. Can you handle the flour and spices?”

“Of course!” Rocinante smiled, giving Sanji a thumbs up. Sanji pulled a coffee strainer from the bag next to the coffee machine, grabbed a little wire mesh colander, and set them up over a tupperware container before resting the broken molasses jar upside down inside it. Sanji started carefully measuring out half a cup of orange juice, keeping his head down as Rocinante measured out the rest of the flour.

Once the flour was all measured out into the bowl, Rocinante picked up the little plastic spice containers next, lining up the cinnamon and ginger and cloves. The first two needed a tablespoon each, and the third half that. He managed to get the bowl of the wide metal spoon through the opening of the cap on the ginger, but when he went to pull it out the entire little container slipped out of his hand and landed, thankfully, in the bowl. He picked it up, and winced when he saw how little remained inside. That was going to be a very gingery cake unless he did something about it.

After a moment of thought, he picked up the similarly sized container of cinnamon and dumped the entire thing in the bowl. The cloves got a heaping couple of teaspoons, which seemed about the right amount compared to the other two, and Sanji looked into the bowl with his visible eyebrow raised.

“That’s a lot of seasonings.”

“It’ll be a very flavourful cake.” Rocinante said with a grin, ruffling Sanji’s hair. The much smaller blond pouted, and flattened his hair back down.

“Have you put the baking soda in?” he asked, looking at the molasses which had been successfully strained so far.

“Not yet.”

“One and a half tablespoons would be four and a half teaspoons.” Sanji said absently, mixing the orange juice and vegetable oil together.

“Really?” Rocinante held up the floury set of measuring spoons . “I didn’t know that.”

“I’m not surprised.” Sanji scoffed, measuring out half a cup of water. “You didn’t even know where those were kept.” he opened the tupperware cabinet, and pulled out a container that matched the one the molasses was straining into. “Once you’ve got that measured out, stir it all together.” he poured the water into the container, then pushed it next to the one the molasses was straining into. Somewhat surprisingly, there was already an acceptable amount of molasses in it and a steady stream dripping in from the bottom of the strainer. Sanji picked up the tupperware full of water and dumped it out in the sink, wiped the inside with a dishcloth, and moved the strainer over to that one.

“Hand me that scraper?” he asked, pointing to the utensil in question on the counter. Rocinante passed it to him, and watched as the skinny little kid efficiently moved the molasses from tupperware to mixing bowl. Less than two minutes later Rocinante was holding the bowl and slowly pouring it into the bowl of dry ingredients as Sanji stirred to ensure an even mix.

“Okay, now you grease the cake pan while I mix in the egg.” Sanji said confidently, holding out his hand. Rocinante smiled and carefully handed over the egg in question, then walked over to the square baking pan and picked up the no-stick cooking spray. A few liberal spritzes later, he set the pan down on the counter next to Sanji and managed not to trip over his own feet while doing so. Sanji poured the batter in, pushing the last of the batter out of the bowl with the scraper, and set the now-empty bowl in the sink.

“Can you put the cake in the oven?” he asked, tilting his head up to look Rocinante in the eyes. “I’m gonna ask Nami if she wants to lick the scraper.” he smiled, and Roci ruffled his hair again.

“Go watch TV with her, squirt.” Rocinante grinned, giving Sanji a pat between the shoulder blades. “I’ll handle the cleanup.”

“Okay.” Sanji nodded once, a wide smile on his face, and trotted into the living room to offer Nami the batter-smeared scraper.

Half an hour later Rocinante pulled a dry, badly burnt cake from the oven as Law and Nojiko tried to make the fire alarm shut up. Bellemere sighed, leaning in the entrance of the kitchen, and was grateful she thought to hide the orange sherbert ice cream cake in the back of the freezer last night.

**Author's Note:**

> Look at what Rocinante did for Law and tell me this man would not be the most doting father. A bit incompetent, sure, but his kids would turn out alright. The recipe they tried to follow can be found [here](http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/orange-spice-cake), if anyone wants to try it.


End file.
